Monday, July 2, 2012

Spinning Silk Hankies

I was so excited when my Hanks in the Hood silk hankies arrived that I opened the package immediately and started drafting. I was a little afraid of the process, but the fiber was surprisingly easy to draft and spin, and I started creating my thinnest yarn yet!

Each hankie has dozens of layers. I was keeping track of how many I had used and then I realized that it was pointless since there are so many. Plus, a few times I know that I accidently used more than one hankie at a time, so that messed up my count, too.

The pink, blue and green spun together beautifully. I love the jewel tones! I know I've already said that the silk was easy to spin, but I need to mention this again. Silk fibers are so long that the strands don't come apart very easily, making it easy to focus on spinning the drop spindle.

I wrapped my silk yarn around my 2ft tuperware contaer, I had 222 wraps = 444 feet = 148 yards. Horray! The silk bled a bit when I wet it (GENTLY) to set the twist, but as you can see I was still able to keep a lot of color.

Up until this point, I have been using a 2 ft Tupperware container to wrap my spinning because I did not own a niddy noddy (I now have one that I made myself, but that is the content for a different post!) These 2 ft skeins are too small for my yarn swift, but I really should have tried to use that first. I created a tangle in my silk that I was completely unable to fix, so I lost some yardage.

What should I make out of this handspun silk? I am waiting for my WPI (wraps per inch) tool to arrive in the mail so I can determine what weight the yarn actually is, but it appears to be somewhere between lace and fingering weight. I know I want to make some kind of shawl, but I will need to mix this with some other yarn to get enough yardage.

I'm finding myself more and more tempted to buy more of this colorway and just spin more yarn. I tried dyeing silk on my own (to be shared at a later date, still have to edit the videos etc) and while the colors are great they are not nearly as saturated as this batch to go well together. I really want to turn it into a shawl... but I just need more yardage!